


What I Leave Behind

by Anonymous_1701



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Growing Old Together, M/M, old married spirk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 17:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2437259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous_1701/pseuds/Anonymous_1701
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AOS Jim Kirk considers what he will leave behind.</p><p>Do not copy/duplicate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What I Leave Behind

Perhaps it was a sound from inside the house that wakes me. The creak of old kitchen floorboards or the sound of the old fashioned tea pot whistling on the stove inside that impinges upon my consciousness. Decades of the need to be instantly alert brings me abruptly to my senses, a non-existent Red Alert alarm ghosting through my mind. But I am safe, at least for the moment. I relax back against the cushions and slats of the old porch swing. My stocking feet gently rock the swing and I rub the sleep I shouldn’t have been catching from my eyes. McCoy said I need shore leave. Maybe he’s right after all. This does feel good, taking off my responsibilities and letting someone else run things for a change. My command uniforms are hung carefully in the closet upstairs in my old farmhouse, in the room I slept in as a boy. Someone will need me sooner or later, and I'll wear that comfortable uniform again, my second skin. I hope it's later. 

I remodeled the farmhouse decades ago. Ripped out the walls and floors and memories and remade it in the image I wanted. Warm, true hardwood floors rescued from a 200-year old barn replaced the worn carpet of my childhood, with its odd shadows and barely visible stains from the beatings I endured. The pictures on the walls are mine now. Gone are the uncomfortable old photos of people I barely knew, the pictures of people I knew too well and wish I hadn’t. Instead, artwork and holos and archaic film photographs take their place. Smiling faces look back at me, familiar and comforting. Chosen family. A hundred tokens of gratitude, a few dozen small shadowboxes of various medals, and a plethora of plaques grace the bookshelves throughout the house, interspersed with hundreds of paper books collected from dozens of planets over the years. 

I close my eyes and appreciate the true treasures of my little Iowa homestead – the hot sun dappled through the huge oak tree next to the house, the breeze rippling through the cornfields that surround us. They aren’t really mine, these fields of corn. Oh, the land is mine on paper but my old fashioned Amish neighbors have worked the land as they and their ancestors have done for hundreds of years. We have an agreement, these people and I. I appreciate the connections with the past, since I so often live in the future. My people have only been here for a hundred years, a mere blink of time. 

The farmhouse originally belonged to a great-aunt of mine, who gifted it to my father George Kirk and to my mother, Winona, when they started their family. The house came to me when my mother died years ago. Both my parents died in space – my father George on the day of my birth, in his prime, on the Kelvin – my mother Winona on a deep space mission in old age, reluctant to settle planet-side and determined to be useful in an engine room forever. Neither left anything behind to bury, though there are memorial trees on the property commemorating their lives. My father left pictures, and my mother left a legacy of both horrors (thanks to the step-father who shall not be named) and of joys, in her infrequent visits between missions.

I close my eyes and wonder what I will someday leave behind. A houseful of trinkets. The medals, the accolades. A thousand men, women and others who are adventuring through the stars, keeping peace, discovering new people, carrying on the tradition I also belong to. A few good friends, some already gone. And one good man. 

I am in my twilight; my greater half, a most noble being of altruism and courage, is in his prime. He will outlive me, of course. Well, assuming he continues to be rational and restrained while I barrel on ahead to where angels fear to tread, or old age takes me. That’s a strange thought. Dying in my sleep, maybe here on this porch. No, that’s not how I would choose to go. I won’t be patiently waiting in my bed for death to sneak up on me. We’re old friends, death and I. We’ve caught glimpses of each other a thousand times. No, when the time comes, I will be doing something worthwhile, something that makes a difference, but I hope I won’t be sitting on some chunky planet, even my favorite, Earth. I choose the unknown, the second star to the right. We both choose this. The thought comforts me.

I’ve done good things in the time that has been given to me thus far. I was born an inconvenient child, a constant reminder of loss, who grew up a prickly and damaged young man willing to fight for a chance to prove himself. Desperate to find a real place to belong to. Desperate to find people who want him. That man finally grew up, thank goodness. The hateful voices in my head are gone now. I went to the stars and found my people there waiting for me. Found the one who I belong to most of all. I discovered that ultimately, we all belonged to a vision greater than our combined selves. We are more than the sum of our parts. The fear of being left behind has itself been left behind. I am content with who I have become. The voices telling me that I am unworthy have long been silenced by action and connection and time itself, proving them incorrect a hundred times over. I am loved, and I have loved.

My eyes roam over the cornfields, hot and green smelling in the golden sunlight. My neighbors will save a portion of it – good open-pollinated pure corn – as seed for the next year. What seeds will I leave behind? What will grow and take root in my absence? 

What will I leave behind? This house, this land, even this comfortable porch swing, of course. All the material goods I’ve accumulated over the years. The letters. He doesn’t know about them, my greater half. At least I don’t think he knows. Then again, maybe he does know, that sneaky Vulcan. Maybe he pretends that he doesn’t know and is simply hiding that sentimental streak that’s a mile wide that exists under that green hued skin. Green, like my cornfields. The color of life, for me at least. 

The warm breeze lifts the hair on my arms, pulling me from my thoughts. Another small noise from inside the house intrudes upon my contemplation momentarily. No, when I am gone and my Vulcan remains, I will leave him seeds. Seeds that will grow and take root and blossom when I am dead and gone. 

The seeds I leave will be memorable, I hope. The scholarships in both our names. I am pretty sure there’s a ship or two named for us, which makes me squirm a bit. “The SS Kirk” – sounds pretentious. Ah well, there’s some that would say that’s just like me, too. There are a few schools named after us. A pages in the history books. The flowers here around the house that I have taken pains to plant and nourish. Those things are irrelevant.

It is an unfortunate fact that I fell in love with a being who will outlive me easily (not unfortunate that we fell in love, but that I cannot hope to see him grow old). I have made arrangements to leave him a letter, every year on his birthday. And on my birthday, I will send him a bottle of wine grown from the vineyard behind the farmhouse. I will plant trees from New Vulcan (if I can find any that will grow in our climate). My remains will be buried on the property, so as not to become some memorial spot tour groups visit. It will all be set up in advance, in my will, and I will still be here in some small way, what remains of my body (if anything), under my own soil. Death cannot keep us apart for long, it should already know that by the little warp core incident where I died (and then didn’t). A thousand times since then, we have cheated death and outwitted him. When I am pushing daisies, I intend to have the last word. Come on, it’ll be fun, I will whisper in a dozen ways that only he will understand.

McCoy would say that I’m getting old and morbid. He only says that because he’s been old and morbid since the day I met him and I’m only now catching up and he’s finally noticing. Spock doesn’t say anything, just watches me and subtly makes things easier. If I take more photographs of us together than I used to, he doesn’t mention it. If I hold his hand more than I have ever before, he allows it. When we are in bed and I snuggle into his warmth to bring heat to my old bones, he accommodates it without question. 

I am pretty sure he is making me a cup of tea inside right now, puttering around in the kitchen, thinking I’m asleep out here like an old man. Some god awful herbal mix designed to improve mental clarity or some such bullshit. I’ll drink it and pretend I actually like it just to please him. I would do anything to make good memories with him. For him to hold on to when I am gone.

It breaks my heart to know that someday his beautiful, grave and solemn face will wear the same haunted look that Spock Prime wore for so many years. At least at old Spock’s passing, he had me at his side, holding him in my arms. My own Spock will not have that, unless we are unlucky in our last days in Starfleet. He will not take that step into the undiscovered country with me at his side. I will already be there. 

I will be waiting for him.

I hear the screen door screech in protest at opening, and hear his footsteps approach.

Ah, yes, here’s my tea. And my beloved. The mix of sunshine and shade is perfect here in our porch swing, where we sit and watch the corn grow together side by side, drinking terrible tea, as the sun sets.


End file.
